Devolution: Has the voluntary sector had its say?

The devolution agenda has made considerable progress over the past couple of years – 12 areas have now agreed deals and many more have submitted proposals to government.

Cross-sector partnership working is crucial if devolution is to deliver real benefits for local communities, not least around public service reform. For the voluntary sector, this represents both a valuable opportunity to input into the redesign and delivery of public services, and a challenge, in terms of adjusting to changes in local leadership and commissioning structures.

While much has been said about what the voluntary sector can offer to help make devolution a success, little is known about the extent to which it has been involved in the development of proposals or implementation of deals.

Have your say

As surveys go, this is a quick one. In fact, the multiple choice questions shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete.

The survey’s brevity, however, belies the importance of the information gathered. Our hope is that findings will provide a crucial insight into which areas are most in need of support with their cross-sector engagement. It will also allow us to develop and target a suite of resources for the voluntary sector in the coming months.

The survey will run until mid-September to provide sufficient time for everyone to have their say. We will of course let you know what we discover shortly after the deadline. In the meantime, do drop me a line if you have any questions about the survey, or if you’d like to speak about your experiences of devolution.

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Paul joined NCVO over seven years ago after working for a leading public affairs agency. Since then he’s led our policy work on a variety of issues, including welfare-to-work reforms, volunteering, the Compact, public service commissioning and procurement regulations. He now leads our work on funding and finance with a particular focus on charity tax relief and safeguarding EU funding post-Brexit.